The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has been phasing in for the better part of three years, and as it continues to take effect in coming months, it’s affecting the office market in particular.

The trend is important enough that Colliers International convened a Las Vegas Healthcare Real Estate Summit on Nov. 14 to discuss it. To be sure, other factors are influencing medical buildings, but Obamacare is an especially important force these days.

That’s because solo docs and other smaller medical practices are consolidating, said Stacy Scheer, a senior associate with Colliers’ Healthcare Properties Group. To better handle the effects of reform, including more patients and new insurance regulations, doctors are banding together in larger practices. That lets them cut duplicate spaces such as waiting rooms and restrooms. They’re also making spaces more efficient: Exam rooms are still separate, of course, but doctors are likelier to share offices in single, large “bullpen” these days, rather than keep a private suite, Scheer said. Technological innovations such as electronic medical records and telemedicine also mean less need for space.

Other doctors are closing their offices to join hospital-based practices, or retiring from the field, Scheer said.

And then there are the medical groups looking for nontraditional spaces. Clinics are abandoning hospital campuses and moving into shopping centers near residential neighborhoods to be closer to patients.

Put it all together, and you have an oversupply of space: Colliers’ third-quarter market report showed a medical-office vacancy rate of 22.6 percent, the highest since 2004. That’s contributing in a big way to overall office vacancy of 22.3 percent.

Scheer said the market will eventually absorb the space, but the city has four years of inventory on the market, and that’s not factoring in new users who build custom space rather than taking up existing suites.

Health care isn’t completely dragging down the market, though. Summit panelists also said trade-group initiatives to boost medical and wellness tourism could inject new life into the market. That’s because efforts to attract patients to Las Vegas from across the globe will encourage new schools, training facilities and centers of excellence in medical research, training and preventive care, Scheer said.

Those centers, in turn, will absorb larger industrial or flex spaces. Consider the agreement between Roseman University of Health Sciences and the Nevada Cancer Institute to reopen the institute’s shuttered, 184,000-square-foot building in Summerlin as a medical school by 2017.

“I would say the submarket is not quite stable, though I don’t think we’re getting any worse as far as vacancy and rental rates,” Scheer said. “But I do think it’s on its way to stabilizing.”

■ The medical-space market may be struggling, but that didn’t stop Gatski Commercial brokers from closing a big deal.

And the team brokered a 39-month lease for Style Event Design at 6630 Arroyo Springs St. The 13,671-square-foot space leased for $268,227. EJM Arroyo North I Property LLC is the landlord.

■ The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors recently took time out to honor its own.

At its Nov. 16 installation dinner at the Four Seasons, it named David Boyer of Prudential Americana Group its Realtor of the Year, for his service as a leader in the profession and the community.

The association also gave its Gene Nebeker Memorial Award for professionalism and service to the association and the community to Ronnie Schwartz of Coldwell Banker Premier Realty. Mark Miscevic of the Meadows Group Realty won the Ronn Reiss Award for educational excellence and leadership. Lee Barrett of Barrett and Co. received the Frank Sala Award for commitment to grass-roots political action and property-rights protection.

The association’s Hall of Fame inductees included Robert Hamrick and Neil Schwartz of Coldwell Banker Premier, and Elizabeth Nebeker of Las Vegas Realty.

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